


i don't wanna be funny anymore

by spaghettirobot



Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Angst with a Happy Ending, Break Up, Character Study, F/F, Getting Back Together, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 19:46:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18667150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaghettirobot/pseuds/spaghettirobot
Summary: Becky got tired of always being fourth fiddle and left the Four Horsewomen for a solo career. But all the recognition in the world can't bring back the woman she left behind.





	i don't wanna be funny anymore

The thing about it, the thing that really gets Becky every time is that Charlotte doesn’t even want to be better.

She just is.

By the very nature of her pedigree, by her natural charisma, by whatever gifts bestowed upon the Flair bloodline she blows everyone else out of the water without even trying.

Becky’s been close enough to know that part is bullshit, actually. That’s what makes it even worse. She knows how hard Charlotte tries, she knows that Charlotte wants nothing more than to step out of her famous fathers long shadow. Somehow knowing that underneath all of the put upon superiority is a fucking saint amongst we mere mortals makes everything worse.

But by fuck, that woman can work a stage.

Becky shouldn’t even be crushed in amongst the throng of willing disciples to the throne of The Queen. She’s the one who chose to leave the Four Horsewomen, she’s the one that stabbed everyone in the back on the way to her solo career. There’s nobody to blame but herself - and yet.

Here she is.

Her fiery red hair pulled down into a low ponytail, a black beanie shoved as far down as humanly possibly. In this crowd, she’s another admirer. In this crowd she’s not Judas with the knife still dripping blood in her hands. Punny little Becky, always putting everyone else over the top - her words, her lyrics, and her arrangements. Only, hey, wouldn’t that part sound better with Sasha harmonizing and yeah, Charlotte won’t you take the lead on this.

The crazy thing is that Becky let it go on for years like that because it fucking worked, didn’t it. They went from playing street fairs and shitty hole in the wall venues to playing places with actual names that you could find on the GPS. So yeah, she got smaller and smaller in the foreground but she pulled the strings in the background and that had to be enough.

It was until it wasn’t.

Becky’s replacement - technically she’s called Sonya but Becky reserves all rights to shade - slams the last few chords and the lights dim on the stage as Charlotte takes the mic. She’s clearly regaining her breath from the upbeat nature of the last song, sweat dripping down her cut off tank top, and yet she even makes heaving breath into a microphone seem sexy and effortlessly so.

If Becky wasn’t so sure she loved her she’d know that she hates Charlotte with every fiber of her being. Lately, it’s hard to tell the difference.

“You guys have been such an awesome crowd,” The crowd roars up around Becky at the blatant pandering. Charlotte beckons them even louder with her arms pumping in the air, the air passes through the microphone creating a mildly off-putting effect. The crowd doesn’t seem to mind, of course they don’t. Charlotte scans the crowd with that blinding, million dollar smile - Becky tries to make herself as small and inconsequential as possible. She can think of no greater humiliation than being caught with her hand in the Charlotte jar.

As the crowd noise dies down Charlotte turns back to Bayley, Sasha, and Replacement Becky and cues up the final song. Becky recognizes the rhythm through line before Charlotte takes the mic again. Charlotte might as well have reached directly into Becky’s chest and squeezed her heart. That’s what it feels like anyway.

She’d written this song for Charlotte back in the good days when they thought they were above this whole fame game. The moment is still burned in Becky’s mind slow motion like a car wreck.

Becky left home at 15 with barely anything more than what would sustain her and some mementos should she forget herself along the way. Plus her guitar, of course. She bounced around for fucking years on years on years before she found Charlotte. Always Charlotte, always first. She’d never been hit by a car, personally, but through third person accounts Becky can safely say the first time she saw Charlotte was like being plowed over by a car.

She’d spent some time bouncing between bands, leaving or being kicked out for one reason or another. Becky played as a session guitarist on a few shitty albums, she played on one truly great one as well but that’s a story for another time. By the time she stumbled across Charlotte singing for a band truly not worthy of her time at some skanky house party, Becky was ready to hang it up. Go back to Ireland, cut her losses and begin the process of reintegrating into linear, 9 to 5 working society.

As Becky remembers it time slowed down, every sound not produced by Charlotte ceased to exist, and the world narrowed down to the two of them. When Becky shares this version of events Charlotte always looks at her with this soft, fond smile and tells her how stupid she is. Looked, Becky reminds herself stiffly, everything with Charlotte has to be past tense.

Anyway, there’s a story to be told here - differing opinions on slow motion aside. Becky saw her and like a sirens song was drawn toward the stage, which was literally a few wooden pallets shoved together but might as well have been a throne. Charlotte locked eyes with Becky and Becky locked eyes with Charlotte until the last song of her set. Unbidden, Becky reached up her hand to Charlotte and helped her off the pallets. The din of the party surrounded them as Charlotte led a very willing Becky to a secluded hallway.

They barely introduced themselves before Charlotte pushed Becky up against a wall and kissed the air straight out of her. Becky took Charlotte back home to her shitty, one-bedroom apartment and they spent the rest of that weekend fucking and talking and talking and fucking and somewhere in there became the first two horsewomen. Charlotte opened up about trying to forge her own path in a famous rock family and Becky talked about coming from nothing and grinding all the way up to next-to-nothing, only a slight improvement.

Somewhere in there Charlotte found that box of old mementos and pictures while searching for a much more fun and less embarrassing box of toys.

Becky can’t get the image of Charlotte rolling around on the floor, laughing hysterically at Becky’s terrible haircuts, at her too tough trying too hard pictures with cigarettes hanging out of her mouth and way too big leather jackets.

“Who the hell are you trying to be?” Charlotte choked out in between gut wrenching laughs.

Becky had responded, warbling out of tune. “That’s just me before we met.”

Charlotte had decided she liked Becky’s life being divided into Before Charlotte and After Charlotte and all talk of those embarrassing pictures got tabled until a few weeks later when Becky presented Charlotte with the whole song, arrangement and all, for their one month anniversary.

And now Replacement Becky launches into Real Becky’s jaunty guitar line and Charlotte sweeps over the crowd as she sings and she sings and misses Becky as she pushes her way out of the crowd and into the night.

She feels Charlotte’s eyes on her retreat but refuses to give her the satisfaction of acknowledging she’s been caught.

*

Becky supposes part of the problem has to do with her first single as a solo artist.

(She supposes a bigger, even more significant problem is the fact that she’d gone solo at all but some strings need to be pulled.)

Back when she was one of the two founding members of the band and she and Charlotte were so in love that Becky didn’t care about the Flair shadow, she was fine playing the fool. That’s the whole thing about marketing and pre-packaging, everyone needs a box or they’re nobody at all.

Charlotte? She’s the Queen, the unattainable standard. Bayley? The huggable one. Sasha? That’s easy, the legit boss. But where did that leave Becky? With her thick brogue of an Irish accent and willingness to do whatever it takes to put a smile on Charlotte’s face? The clown, of course.

Releasing a song called, “I Don’t Wanna Be Funny Anymore” might have been exactly as on the nose as she needed to be.

She’d been playing around with the song in her top secret, non-FHW songwriting notebook. The one that Charlotte playfully tried to get to read, she’d offered everything under the sun to try and get a glimpse but Becky wouldn’t budge.

Charlotte would pout those lips and Becky would rebuke with a playful nibble and the promise of sexual distraction. And all would be right in the kingdom, if only for a stalling moment.

The truth being the contents of that notebook would tear Charlotte apart. Pages and pages filled with the bubbling discontent that Becky carefully locked within her heart. Desperately chambered away with no intention to ever fire that emotional bullet.

They’d been happy for years and then they’d been successful. In Charlotte’s mind those two periods are one era, the problem being Becky couldn’t help but think of them as two. 

When the single drops, not an hour goes by before Becky gets a simple text from Charlotte.

‘Fuck You.’

Both first letters capitalized, proper punctuation at the end, Charlotte might as well have walked into the apartment and kicked Becky in the teeth. 

Becky has always appreciated the power of words.

*

The next couple of weeks Becky waits for the other shoe to drop. She expects some sort of gloating text or a spiteful phone call in the middle of the night calling Becky every name under the sun or even a leak to the press about how pathetic good ol’ Becky Lynch is peeking in on her old life.

Silence is much worse. Silence is indifference, silence is the hollow feeling that maybe it doesn’t matter so much anymore, silence is Charlotte being over her.

Becky finds herself in the shittiest fucking position of her own creation. It’s a funny complicated thing when you entangle your relationship with your band, leaving one means leaving the other. Becky left the band and her relationship left her.

Years of being drawn to each other like a magnet on steel and in the end it all came down to an ultimatum.

For someone with such a burned in memory, Becky doesn’t remember the exact words. She blacked out in a haze of gripping fear, like standing on the edge of a skyscraper and looking down. The handrails are there, sure, but it’s still a long fucking fall. It amounted to leave the band and there’s no me to come back to.

Becky walked out the door, as she’s wont to do. You can get good enough at anything if you do it enough.

*

The first couple of months they exchange pathetic cries for help, throwing out olive branches that they’re both too proud to accept.

In between drunken benders and insomnia fueled lyric binges, Becky shows up at the apartment - their old apartment - thinking she’s some sort of ersatz Lloyd Dobler. Holding up a boombox, playing Charlotte all of the songs she’d written about the two of them until inevitably the neighbors call the cops and Becky scrams. But she’d always get drunk enough to try again, throwing pebbles at the window, singing along until Charlotte sadly shows up in the window.

Once Charlotte stood so long in the window and even from the sidewalk Becky could tell there were tears so she thought maybe this is the time, this is when she gets let in. Instead she gets a text that reads, ‘please stop' and that turns out to be the last time shows up with her boombox.

But this is not a one act play.

Charlotte calls Becky sober and angry which is altogether worse than drunk and angry because Becky can’t pass off any of the harsh criticisms as impairment. She lists Becky’s many faults and then starts crying as she remembers Becky’s strengths and Becky can’t get a word in edgewise before Charlotte hangs up.

Sometimes Charlotte calls drunk and horny and full of regret and somehow this is worse than sober and angry. For all of the problems they had - and oh they had problems - sex was never one of them. Charlotte calls and begs her to come over and on her nicest nights tells Becky that nobody can make her come like she does. On her cruelest nights she tells Becky about everyone she’s let try since she left. No matter the night she always finds herself right before Becky has a chance to accept or deny and hangs up.

Becky can’t count how many times she’s said sorry. She can’t count how many times Charlotte’s told her it isn’t enough.

*

Her second single is a reactionary sprawling piece aptly titled, “It Hurts Until It Doesn’t”.

Becky writes it on the low between drunken stupors, in between Charlotte rejections, and if it wasn’t for the record label loving a softer, contemplative sound from her she would have happily buried it in the ground.

The day the song releases she turns off her phone entirely and ventures out into the city. There’s no plan past the plan that is avoiding whatever reaction Charlotte has to her newest release.

Instead she finds herself a bar and some adoring fans and pretends to be a different part of herself for a little while. Becky picks up a woman named Mandy who could maybe be Charlotte if you were drunk and squinted and weren’t trying all that hard anyway.

She lets Mandy take her back to her apartment and Becky fucks her there, quick and impersonal but efficient and memorable. Mandy goes to touch her but Becky pushes her away, kindly but firm. Being semi-famous in certain music circles allows a bit of rudeness when it comes to hookups. Mandy seems like one of those girls who’s happy enough to have fucked a celebrity, no matter the status.

On that note, Becky carries herself back to her apartment. More numb than before but at least she tried not to be.

She turns her phone back on when she gets home and there’s the flood of messages but none of them from Charlotte.

Becky wishes she could say it didn’t hurt like a motherfucker. But that’d be a lie.

*

There are other singles and they all strike out on the airwaves like barely veiled letters to Charlotte. Outside of the first one, none of the letters get a response.

Becky starts to feel empty writing lyrics on a page. She pours that emptiness into her music and the label loves it. It’s amazing the joy these people get from her pain.

Whatever works becomes her mantra.

She listens to the new music that FHW releases. Smugly critiques the complicated guitar parts that have disappeared from their music because of her absence. Her smugness can only substitute for happiness for so long.

Becky goes out and she finds poor substitutes for Charlotte in every bar and somewhere deep down she hopes that Charlotte isn’t doing the same.

That doesn’t make her feel whole either.

She drinks and she fucks and she writes and she repeats. She writes and she drinks and she calls Charlotte and gets her voicemail. She writes and she drinks and she writes and still nothing.

Her music is a well received divergence from her FHW days and she finds absolution in that. Momentary release knowing she made the right decision and lost everything.

The absolution fades as do the words. The well dries up as she hits voicemail over and over and over. The ink runs dry when Charlotte doesn’t reach out - drunk or sober.

Her solo album sells, her record label is happy.

FHW fans eventually get used to the stripped down sound, Becky is a part of a previous era. Gone but not forgotten but get it clear, we’ve moved on.

Becky can’t take the silence, she’s gotten what she wanted. She is the genius, she is the music and lyrics, she is the man.

It’s nothing without Charlotte by her side.

*

It’s not stalking if you used to be in the band and the lead singer is your ex and the other bandmates minus your replacement used to be your best friends. It’s just like, not super encouraged because it’s fucking pathetic. Especially if it didn’t have to be like this at all and instead of abandoning them to go solo you could have just talked about your feelings.

Sure your solo career is actually going great but it turns out the price of greatness is a little too rich for your blood.

Becky finds herself back at a FHW show after she’s pretty sure but not one hundred percent sure that Charlotte saw her at the last one. (Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic.) Only this time she doesn’t do a damn thing to hide that she’s there.

Becky’s been watching TedTalks and she’s pretty sure this is what qualifies as a fucking power move. This time the loyal fans don’t know what to do with themselves. They see Becky and rush her for autographs during the opening act. She feels bad, she remembers opening to crowds that blatantly ignored her in favor of literally anything else. It’s shit.

The opening act finishes their set and Becky pushes her way to the front barriers in the lull before FHW takes the stage. She wants to make sure there’s no doubt in her mind this time that Charlotte can see her.

The lights dim and start to pulse. Bayley makes her way out onto stage first and takes her place behind the drum set, Sasha comes next and starts plucking on the bass, followed by Replacement Becky who does fine enough on the guitar, Becky supposes.

Charlotte comes out in this fucking painted on red silk tank top and red leather hot pants tied together with a bold red lip. Every part the siren that first sang her way into Becky’s heart. Charlotte looks out into the crowd and Becky can pinpoint the moment she looks directly below her and sees Becky, plain as the eye can see.

A litany of emotions pass over Charlotte’s face and if you weren’t specifically looking for them you’d notice none of the journey. But Becky is looking so she sees shock turn to fury to sadness until finally vulnerability. From their very first moment Charlotte and Becky didn’t have a language spoken in words so much as micro expressions.

Charlotte sings to her and only her the entire night.

They finish off the set with “Hearts Like Ours” and Charlotte gives her a look before the lights dim and she mouths a single word.

“Wait.”

Becky’s getting better at doing what she’s told.

She waits as security clears out the crowd, she pushes through some of her clout as they try to push her out with the common folk. She waits while the crew tears down the stage and she waits until she thinks maybe this is Charlotte’s cruel version of revenge. Blindside Becky with hope and then leave her hanging on a thread.

Becky hunches her shoulders and tucks her hands into her leather jacket. Resigned to call this a loss and take her deserved licks she starts to walk off and find the nearest bar when she feels a tug on her jacket and spins around, incapable of hiding the too fucking earnest look on her face.

There’s Charlotte wrapped up in a jacket and sweats like a suit of armor but her face is scrubbed clean of any makeup. For all intents and purposes, she’s left an opening. A portion of herself that isn’t unattainable stage Charlotte but somewhere closer to the truth.

“Were you leaving?” Charlotte steps back a little bit, Becky follows without realizing.

“I thought you weren’t coming,” Becky pulls her hands from her pockets and crosses them over her body. “Didn’t want security to think I’m a loser.”

“You are a loser,” Charlotte fires back on reflex and then seems to curl back into her hurt. “I always FaceTime my dad after every show. You know that.”

Becky nods.

“I don’t want to do whatever this is here,” Charlotte turns and starts to walk, knowing Becky will be at heel. “You know where we’re going.”

Becky does and her feet carry her a couple blocks down the street to their favorite hole in the wall 24/7 kombucha shop. Charlotte doesn’t speak to her and Becky’s not going to ruin the closest she’s had to a good thing in a while.

Charlotte orders for the both of them like she always did and Becky finds them a table in the corner of the room. She tries not to work herself up into a frenzy of emotion while she waits for Charlotte to join her and it’s situations like these where she wishes she had her songwriting notebook. She settles for making notes on her phone while trying to not look like she’s fidgeting.

Their regular order gets placed down in front of Becky and Charlotte sits down in front of her. Silent.

The Silence - so weighted it becomes its own event - stretches on until Becky realizes that this will never truly start unless she goes first. In Charlotte’s mind, and Becky is something of a colloquial expert on Charlotte’s mind, Becky caused this so Becky has to swallow her pride.

She decides they’ve spent entirely too much time beating around the bush so Becky lays it out. 

“I’m a fuck up who should have talked about how I felt instead of letting it all pent up in that notebook of mine until I couldn’t take it anymore. Then I just left. Like a real fuck up.” Becky blurts out all at once. “Or that’s what my therapist told me.”

“I hope your therapist doesn’t call you a fuck up,” Charlotte blinks.

“Not to my face,” Becky quips. “But you could, if you wanted. I was a real fuck up to you and I want to make it clear I don’t regret leaving the band but I’ll always regret leaving you.”

“Becky-“ Charlotte starts but Becky holds her hand up.

“Now hold on and let me say this or else I won’t ever have the courage again.” Charlotte nods and Becky takes a sip of kombucha. “I wasn’t happy in the band. I wasn’t happy for a long while and somewhere in there you and I became the band.”

“You stopped talking to me,” Charlotte rushes out, unable to hold back.

“I stopped knowing how,” Becky twists her hands together underneath the table. “It wasn’t exactly our love language. Couldn’t really figure out how to fucking tell you, pun intended.”

Charlotte expels a breath and tries to hide the fond smile that takes over in spite of the hurt. “I tried hating you, Sasha tried to help me hate you. Lord knows that’s a bridge you’re never gonna un-burn.”

“I have one of those faces,” Becky lays her hands flat out on the table. Trying to lay herself bare of her anxious habits.

“Be serious.”

Becky winces apologetically.

“I could tell you weren’t happy and I know I said you stopped talking to me but I stopped trying,” Charlotte rubs at the corner of her eyes. “Everything was going so well, we were getting recognition and I guess I thought we would have time.”

“Then I left.” Becky hangs her head.

Charlotte reaches over and tilts Becky’s head back up, keeping her fingers on her chin. “Then I told you not to come back.” She strokes her fingers on Becky’s chin. “I was hurt and blindsided and we were both wrong.”

“So so wrong,” Becky leans into Charlotte’s warm touch.

“Haven’t we hurt enough?” Charlotte drops her hand from Becky’s chin to entangle with her hands on the table.

Becky nods, clasping Charlotte’s hand and holding on for dear life. Her heart feels like it’s running a marathon in her chest and if it leaps out Becky would only have herself to blame.

“We’ve got a lot of shit to sort out, Charlie.” Becky says but everything in her eyes doesn’t want to break the spell.

There’s the band and Becky’s solo career and all the words they avoided saying to each other to avoid breaking what they had. But Becky gets the sense, for the first time in a long time, that her future has Charlotte in it.

Charlotte brings their hands up to her lips and gives them a long kiss, leaning across the table as only someone so long and athletic can do and gently knocking their foreheads together.

“Together,” Charlotte whispers.

“Together,” Becky parrots and revels in the glimpse of a second chance.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a 1am plot bunny that kicked me in the face after Charlotte's big boot on Smackdown tonight. Inspiration works in mysterious ways. Who knows. Kudos and comments are always appreciated but honestly this was just fun for me. Enjoy!
> 
> Songs in order:
> 
> Just Before We Met by Noah and the Whale  
> I Don't Wanna Be Funny Anymore by Lucy Dacus  
> It Hurts Until It Doesn't by Mothers  
> Hearts Like Ours by The Naked and Famous


End file.
